mjmooney Posted February 13, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted February 13, 2021 (edited) I nearly put this in the "Things that piss you off" thread, but I suppose here is more appropriate. It seems that the newer a laptop is, the fewer the USB ports it will have. I recently upgraded my home recording setup, from an old and creaking Toshiba laptop to a rather whizzy Huawei. Only trouble is, I need a fair bit of hardware connectivity - audio interface, CD read/write drive (new laptops tend not to have them), MIDI controller piano keyboard, and (planned) additional monitor. The old machine could handle all that - it had a CD drive and three USB 3 ports. The new one has ONE USB C, and that's it. So I bought an offboard CD drive and a 4 into 1 (passive) docking station. Big mistake. It worked fine for the MIDI keyboard. But the CD drive didn't want to know. Seems like that required a powered, rather than passive USB dock. As for the audio interface, things were OK as long as I monitored on headphones. But when I turned on my (powered) speakers, they gave out a perpetual annoying whine. A quick Google (OK, Mooney) revealed that, again, the passive hub was to blame. Lesson learned. The hub went into the spare parts drawer, and I ordered a powered version - 1 x USB C into the laptop, and 4 USB 3 ports, for the MIDI controller, audio interface and CD drive. Hallelujah, everything works! All sorted? Nope. Because now I want to get a large monitor, and how do they connect to a laptop? That's right, USB C. Which is spoken for by the hub. Where do I go from here? Wireless? EDIT: I guess the answer is that I should have bought this one instead: Edited February 13, 2021 by mjmooney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 Yep! Simple answer A USB 3.0 dock / hub as above will have bandwidth for video + other USB 3 or C devices. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted February 13, 2021 Author VT Supporter Share Posted February 13, 2021 (edited) Anybody wanna buy a 4 into 1 hub? Hardly used. EDIT: Hang on, though. That isn't mains powered is it? Edited February 13, 2021 by mjmooney 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 15 minutes ago, mjmooney said: Anybody wanna buy a 4 into 1 hub? Hardly used. EDIT: Hang on, though. That isn't mains powered is it? It does PD charging so you can plug a USB C plug into the socket and it'll take that power and distribute it out to the other sockets to the laptop to charge that. But I'd be surprised if you needed it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted February 13, 2021 Author VT Supporter Share Posted February 13, 2021 Right, I'll try that, then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 (edited) The laptop doesn't have any dedicated video ports? I'd expect a DP socket tbh! If you're connecting from the laptop to the monitor via USB C, depending on how many ports the monitor has, you might be able to avoid an extra purchase by just plugging one or two things that are currently plugged in to the laptop directly into the monitor instead. It'd be very unusual for a monitor to accept USB input without having at least a couple of extra USB ports on it to passthrough to your laptop. Edited February 14, 2021 by Davkaus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 4, 2021 Author VT Supporter Share Posted March 4, 2021 (edited) On 13/02/2021 at 17:38, darrenm said: It does PD charging so you can plug a USB C plug into the socket and it'll take that power and distribute it out to the other sockets to the laptop to charge that. But I'd be surprised if you needed it. Job's a good 'un. Edited March 5, 2021 by mjmooney 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genie Posted March 4, 2021 Share Posted March 4, 2021 On 14/02/2021 at 11:11, Davkaus said: I'd expect a DP 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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